Sounds like the port forwarding worked well If the firewall icon disappears then it means that there's no firewall interfering with LW's performance.
Have you noticed any improvement in your download speeds since then?

You could have a look through this thread, it has some good tips for optimising LW's performance
Configuring LW for best performance

They improved some, but not what I was expecting. I can download files that give 0 results better now, but it takes forever downloading from 1 host. Uploading has changed some. Where as, I use to see just the number of slots I allow uploading from me. Now I see the proper amount of slots, plus a ton of others in 'queue', atleast 10 always. I only allow three slots and 1 upload at a time.

The download speed that you can get depends on the host too...what their connection speed really is (some people will set the wrong connection speed because they think it's going to improve their download speed) & how many upload slots they've allowed. Some people will allow way too many upload slots for their bandwidth & so each person downloading from them finds it really slow.